I am rapidly running out of things to say about this show. What I will say is that, on the whole, I don't think it's as interesting as the first season. Part of this is that the novelty factor is no longer there, and there's not enough new this season to make up for that. But by this point last time, there were several real stand-out heroes--this season, the only real stand-out is Parthenon, IMO.
I think also that this season I've been really struck by the arbitrariness of Stan's decision-making--obviously there is going to have to be a lot of subjectivity in something like this, but some of his criticisms have seemed out of proportion. I realize that there has to be some uncertainty involved--there wouldn't be much suspense if the contestants (and viewers) could accurately predict what the real challenges were--but some of this has been contradictory, such as Stan praising Hyper-Strike for the same thing that Mindset was censured for earlier (being blunt about a teammate's weaknesses at the risk of hurting their feelings). This was probably the case in first season as well but I don't remember noticing it as often.
This week had Dr. Dark causing power outages. The heroes had to fix the problem, and to do so had to get through a narrow drain pipe filled with snakes and spiders. It was probably a safe bet that at least some of the contestants would have trouble with this task, snakes and spiders being fairly common fears, and some did, but all made it through all right in the end.
After that they were given a night off, a dinner in a Mexican restaurant, where they interacted with the public, inluding children--and had to figure out how to handle it when it turned out that they had no money to pay the bill.
As in the first season, there was a segment where things from the heroes' pasts are revealed, by Dr. Dark of course; however, unlike the first season, none of these things were particularly bad. That was surprising, since on the whole the challenges seem to be a bit edgier than first season's. But Stan really wasn't all that critical of any of the heroes' "dark secrets," which was not the case last year. I think it's likely that--after seeing what happened last season--the contestants asked friends and family to be circumspect about anything they revealed about them to representatives of the show, because there really wasn't much to work with there.
One thing that is new about this season is the mission reports the team has to make about each other. This has the potential for a lot of drama, but the show doesn't really focus on that, for which I'm grateful. It is interesting to hear how the team perceives one another, and it's not always the same way they appear on camera.
This week's elimination was, unsurprisingly, Whip-Snap. She was fairly open about her lack of confidence, which would have been all right if it was something that improved more over time, but in the end it didn't seem to. What we saw last episode, where she was talking about how the situation stressed her, she couldn't do it anymore--that hurt her, I know.
Predictions? My guess, if I were going by just what we've seen so far, would be that Hygena would be the next to go--based on her task performance, which the rest of the team sees as lacking. However, she could certainly redeem herself in next week's show.
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